5 ms·

Show HN: Type in a search to find the average of the first 50 image results

35 points by sherril8 13y ago

When you search for something, it pulls the first 50 image results from Bing Image Search then blends them all together. The resulting image is produced by taking the mean color value of each pixel across all of the images.

bromagosa 13y ago
These are the best ones I've managed to create so far: Circle: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/329 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/329 Benzene: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/303 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/303 Nike logo: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/299 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/299
- TuringTest 13y ago
  Shoe: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/114 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/114 Face: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/29 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/29 Spirit: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/510 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/510 It works best on symmetric, concrete objects. http://imgessence.com/browse http://imgessence.com/browse
- epaga 13y ago
  Pretty fascinating... Jesus: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/437 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/437
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
freefrancisco 13y ago
searched for "boobs", total fail :-(
- LancerSykera 13y ago
  I'm currently working on "small tits asian" as my first search.
tlarkworthy 13y ago
This is prime territory for PCA and eigenimages http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface
- sherril8 13y ago
  By the end of the week I should have an option to search for faces only. The Bing API makes that pretty easy to do.
drucken 13y ago
"Oh no! Server Error: 500 (Internal Server Error)" This is the problem with services this fun to play with. Here at HN we break our toys!
- sherril8 13y ago
  Oops, looks like this happened after I went to sleep. Hopefully there werent too many issues for people.
pawelwentpawel 13y ago
This is a really cool project, good job! Spoon is an interesting example : http://imgessence.com/browse/view/190 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/190 - You can see the many basic outlines of a 'spoony' shape. However, all of those images of spoon are presenting the object rotated at some more or less random angles. It would be interesting to add some algorithm that would try to match the images (rotate / scale) to the average and hence give less noisy output.
- simba-hiiipower 13y ago
  i actually kind of like that it doesn't attempt to rotate/scale to an average.. this way you get a rough sense of the most common orientations. in this case the images with the spoon 'head' to top-right look to be most common (darkest/most defined). but the next most common orientations appear to be where the spoon is flipped with the head aligned somewhere between top and middle left, and with many more variations..
ColinWright 13y ago
So, just pull and average. No attempt to align, no attempt to decompose, no attempt at PCA, no processing at all. Just pull and average. I'm struggling to see why this is interesting. Added in edit: Rather than just downvoting, perhaps you could tell my why this is interesting. Were there technical challenges to overcome? If so - what? What did the implementor learn by doing this? What are you learning by using it? Please - help me to see why this is at all interesting! I genuinely don't understand.
- kashif 13y ago
  I agree. it isn't.
- DanielStraight 13y ago
  To the extent that it is interesting, I think it is in large part precisely because of the simplicity. It's doing the simplest thing that could possibly work (where work is defined as create an interesting image which in some sense is interpretable as the "essence" of the search), and surprisingly, even with such a simple approach it does work in many cases. See the results for Rolex (http://imgessence.com/browse/view/1543 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/1543). It's very watch-y, even without any processing. If you try to judge it more as art than tech, it's more interesting I think.
- sherril8 13y ago
  I agree that it needs to be tweaked a bit so the images align better. It doesnt handle portrait oriented images very well. I think as programmers, sometimes we fail to realize that just because something is simple to us doesnt mean it is to everybody else. The reason I put this together is because whenever I saw these types of images posted somewhere, non-technical people would reply saying they wish they had a way to do it themselves. There werent many technical challenges honestly. The lessons I learned were more about finding something people want and delivering it quickly with the minimum features. Now I can tweak and iterate and try the more challenging aspects.
BrechtVds 13y ago
Apple in apple: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/370 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/370
jordn 13y ago
This is (surprisingly) very cool! Some of these results could easily be hung on a wall. I'd love it if you could add some sort of crude voting system, so that the good ones rise to the top.
- sherril8 13y ago
  I am definitely looking into adding a voting system. For now, I wanted to keep the site as simple as possible.
jstanley 13y ago
Looks pretty cool, but can anyone explain why this is so slow? Is it this slow even if only one person is using it at a time?
- sherril8 13y ago
  I threw this together so quickly that I didnt honestly do much benchmarking. I will be trying to improve performance as much as I can. It does only pull high res photos from Bing. Which in itself, takes around 1 minute over CURL (longer if it gets hung up on a heavy file). The image processing takes another minute or two usually.

35 points by sherril8 13y ago

bromagosa 13y ago

These are the best ones I've managed to create so far: Circle: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/329 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/329 Benzene: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/303 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/303 Nike logo: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/299 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/299

TuringTest 13y ago
Shoe: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/114 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/114 Face: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/29 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/29 Spirit: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/510 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/510 It works best on symmetric, concrete objects. http://imgessence.com/browse http://imgessence.com/browse
epaga 13y ago
Pretty fascinating... Jesus: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/437 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/437

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

freefrancisco 13y ago

searched for "boobs", total fail :-(

LancerSykera 13y ago
I'm currently working on "small tits asian" as my first search.

tlarkworthy 13y ago

This is prime territory for PCA and eigenimages http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface

sherril8 13y ago
By the end of the week I should have an option to search for faces only. The Bing API makes that pretty easy to do.

drucken 13y ago

"Oh no! Server Error: 500 (Internal Server Error)" This is the problem with services this fun to play with. Here at HN we break our toys!

sherril8 13y ago
Oops, looks like this happened after I went to sleep. Hopefully there werent too many issues for people.

pawelwentpawel 13y ago

This is a really cool project, good job! Spoon is an interesting example : http://imgessence.com/browse/view/190 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/190 - You can see the many basic outlines of a 'spoony' shape. However, all of those images of spoon are presenting the object rotated at some more or less random angles. It would be interesting to add some algorithm that would try to match the images (rotate / scale) to the average and hence give less noisy output.

simba-hiiipower 13y ago
i actually kind of like that it doesn't attempt to rotate/scale to an average.. this way you get a rough sense of the most common orientations. in this case the images with the spoon 'head' to top-right look to be most common (darkest/most defined). but the next most common orientations appear to be where the spoon is flipped with the head aligned somewhere between top and middle left, and with many more variations..

ColinWright 13y ago

So, just pull and average. No attempt to align, no attempt to decompose, no attempt at PCA, no processing at all. Just pull and average. I'm struggling to see why this is interesting. Added in edit: Rather than just downvoting, perhaps you could tell my why this is interesting. Were there technical challenges to overcome? If so - what? What did the implementor learn by doing this? What are you learning by using it? Please - help me to see why this is at all interesting! I genuinely don't understand.

kashif 13y ago
I agree. it isn't.
DanielStraight 13y ago
To the extent that it is interesting, I think it is in large part precisely because of the simplicity. It's doing the simplest thing that could possibly work (where work is defined as create an interesting image which in some sense is interpretable as the "essence" of the search), and surprisingly, even with such a simple approach it does work in many cases. See the results for Rolex (http://imgessence.com/browse/view/1543 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/1543). It's very watch-y, even without any processing. If you try to judge it more as art than tech, it's more interesting I think.
sherril8 13y ago
I agree that it needs to be tweaked a bit so the images align better. It doesnt handle portrait oriented images very well. I think as programmers, sometimes we fail to realize that just because something is simple to us doesnt mean it is to everybody else. The reason I put this together is because whenever I saw these types of images posted somewhere, non-technical people would reply saying they wish they had a way to do it themselves. There werent many technical challenges honestly. The lessons I learned were more about finding something people want and delivering it quickly with the minimum features. Now I can tweak and iterate and try the more challenging aspects.

BrechtVds 13y ago

Apple in apple: http://imgessence.com/browse/view/370 http://imgessence.com/browse/view/370

jordn 13y ago

This is (surprisingly) very cool! Some of these results could easily be hung on a wall. I'd love it if you could add some sort of crude voting system, so that the good ones rise to the top.

sherril8 13y ago
I am definitely looking into adding a voting system. For now, I wanted to keep the site as simple as possible.

jstanley 13y ago

Looks pretty cool, but can anyone explain why this is so slow? Is it this slow even if only one person is using it at a time?

sherril8 13y ago
I threw this together so quickly that I didnt honestly do much benchmarking. I will be trying to improve performance as much as I can. It does only pull high res photos from Bing. Which in itself, takes around 1 minute over CURL (longer if it gets hung up on a heavy file). The image processing takes another minute or two usually.